Nothing upends the family dynamic -- in a good way -- like the birth of a child. The exciting announcement that the baby has arrived is soon followed by a torrent of well-wishers eager to get a first peek at the bundle of joy. As the other members of the tiny wonder’s household adjust to their new reality, the precious newborn remains the center of attention. At holiday gatherings and on text chains, the baby is all anyone wants to talk about.
If there’s a parallel in baseball, it’s the arrival of a rookie starting pitcher. While signing a big-name free agent and seeing him toe the slab for the first time in a new uniform is exhilarating, nothing quite matches the energy and excitement that a fresh-faced starter drums up when he reaches the Majors. Fans can’t help but dream big, wondering aloud whether the kid will help pitch their team into the World Series that very same year like Mel Stottlemyre did in ’64, or even end up in Cooperstown someday like Whitey Ford.
From Stan Bahnsen to Dave Righetti to Joba Chamberlain to Luis Gil, the Yankees have been fortunate to see an array of young pitchers step up and deliver immediate results. All of them had New York buzzing about their performances, and for many, their strong start was a portent of things to come.
Every rookie pitcher’s path to the bigs is different. Some, such as Orlando “El Duque” Hernández and Masahiro Tanaka, plied their craft for many years in their homeland before dazzling in their first foray in pinstripes. Others reach The Show quickly -- perhaps even prematurely in some cases, forced into action as the result of circumstance before they’re fully ready.
This past July, when Clarke Schmidt went down with a season-ending elbow injury that would require Tommy John surgery, the Yankees weighed their replacement options. The trade market was already percolating, with the deadline just a few weeks away. And there were veteran hurlers at Triple-A champing at the bit to step into the big-league rotation.
As if the baseball gods tapped the Yankees on the shoulder and said, "Psssst … I’ve got just the guy for you," the answer appeared when Cam Schlittler walked through the doors of the Yankees’ clubhouse for the first time. He had been virtually unknown just a couple years earlier -- a seventh-round pick in 2022 who posted an ERA north of 4.00 across his first 13 pro starts in 2023. But he worked his tail off, soon becoming the best pitching prospect in the organization.
Schlittler stands 6 feet, 6 inches tall, and after dedicating himself during the offseason to working on his body, he added 10 mph to a four-seam fastball that now touches 100. His physical tools are off the charts. And between the ears?
“I love his makeup,” said Yankees skipper Aaron Boone. “He’s super confident -- understandably so with what he walks out there with.”
![Triple-digit heat has a way of breeding confidence, and Boone [left] is very much aware of how the team benefits from being able to call on a hurler with top-notch stuff. But Schlittler’s ability to light up radar guns is complemented by a looping curveball and a new cutter that has kept hitters on both sides of the plate off balance. “All that stuff really just makes the fastball that much better,” says Rice. (Photo Credit: New York Yankees)](https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/t_16x9/t_w1024/mlb/ma9echcamdqx19rgg2du.jpg)
Add it all together, and would it be a stretch to call Schlittler … a miracle?
He, for one, knows that there is no such thing. His rapid ascent has nothing to do with miracles or any sort of divine intervention.
“Coming into the organization, I had no status, no ranking or anything like that. That’s something I earned,” the 24-year-old said. “But that stuff’s not really the end goal. You don’t just want to be a prospect and that’s it. I wanted to put myself on the map and try to show the front office that I belong here.
“For a lot of guys, it’s easy to get here; it’s hard to stay. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of hard work and commitment. For me to get here, it’s satisfying, but at the end of the day, I’m still working every day to get better and be the best I can in terms of trying to help the team win.”
That mentality is at the core of everything Schlittler has accomplished thus far, and it’s why fans in the Bronx are very excited about the present and the future for the newest member of the Yankees’ rotation. For Schlittler, every good performance is another confidence-builder, every tough outing (and there haven’t been many of late) a learning tool. No moment is too big, and as he gains more experience, he’ll be able to utilize his considerable arsenal to even greater effect, because as teammates tell him and anyone who will listen: “The stuff’s real.”
“We remind him a lot, actually: ‘Dude, you do throw 100,’” said fellow rookie starter Will Warren. “Like, let’s make sure they can hit the fastball before you start giving them any more credit. He’s learning fast, and I think we get to see that start to start. He’s special.”
“His stuff is elite, and it seems like he’s putting it together,” said veteran Carlos Rodón. “He can out-stuff people, but I think he’s got some pitchability within him, so he doesn’t have to out-stuff everybody.
“We just want to see him keep going.”
With the way Schlittler has carried himself since joining the big club -- to say nothing of the way that he has pitched -- there’s every reason to believe Rodón’s wish will come true.
***
By the time Schlittler made his big-league debut on July 9 against the Mariners in front of more than 35,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, he was already brimming with confidence. Although he had made just five starts at Triple-A -- and was roughed up for seven runs in 2 1/3 innings in his final outing on July 2 -- it seemed like everything he tried was working. Even when he was just trying to stick it to an opposing manager.
Schlittler began the 2025 season at Double-A Somerset, which is where he finished a breakout 2024 campaign that saw him lead all Yankees farmhands with 154 strikeouts and earn the Kevin Lawn Award as the top pitcher in the team’s Minor League system. On June 1, he was making his ninth -- and, ultimately, final -- start for the Patriots before getting promoted to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. While facing the Guardians’ Double-A affiliate, the Akron RubberDucks, their manager, Greg DiCenzo, complained to the umpires that Schlittler’s second pitch of the game -- a strike -- should be ruled a ball because his foot wasn’t on the rubber. The umps concurred. A few pitches later, same thing: a swinging strike was called a ball because the right-hander wasn’t on the rubber to begin his wind-up.
Schlittler doesn’t deny that he was in the wrong, but he was ticked off nonetheless. So, as he went into his ensuing deliveries, he started looking straight down at his plant foot before firing the ball toward home plate, sort of an exaggerated way of pantomiming, My foot’s on the rubber! Are you happy now?
He discovered that he actually liked the added step in his routine. He spun five scoreless innings, striking out six RubberDucks and walking none. So, he kept it.
“It’s something I’ve just naturally added into my wind-up,” Schlittler said. “I’m able to look down, reset a little bit, look up, and then just fire the pitch. It was kind of a joke at first. I was so frustrated. And now, it’s something that I feel really comfortable doing. It’s worked out great for me.”
Around that same time, in an effort to complement his burgeoning fastball and a looping curveball that sits around 83 mph, Schlittler heeded the recommendation of Yankees senior director of pitching Sam Briend and experimented with adding a cutter to his repertoire. Both thought it would be a good weapon against lefties, but Schlittler immediately started getting both lefties and righties out with it.
Through his first 11 starts in the Majors -- 10 of which saw him allow three earned runs or fewer; nine of which lasted five innings or more -- the cutter was Schlittler’s second-most used pitch behind his blistering four-seamer, with big-league batters scraping out a meager .214 average against it (and just a .196 avarage against his fastball), according to Brooks Baseball.
“All that stuff really just makes the fastball that much better,” said catcher Ben Rice.
Everything has been coming up roses for Schlittler in 2025. The home crowd that gave him a standing ovation as he walked off the mound in his debut after having staked the Yankees to a 6-2 sixth-inning lead was duly impressed, but part of his success is that he wasn’t. Not one bit. He kept his head down as headed into the home dugout, not even looking up at his overjoyed family in the stands celebrating a remarkable moment in their lives.
“Once I was able to get here, I don’t think the spotlight was too big; I wasn’t really getting that nervous,” Schlittler said. “The first game, there were a little bit of jitters before I showed up to the field, but I felt fine. Even now, at the end of the day, it’s just my job.”
It’s a job Schlittler has been preparing for his entire life.
***
Sports are a big part of the civic fabric in Schlittler’s hometown of Walpole, Massachusetts. Walpole High School’s field hockey team is a juggernaut, with the Porkers having won 14 state championships since 1984, according to their Facebook page. Joe Morgan, who managed the Red Sox to two ALCS appearances in four seasons at the helm from 1988 to ’91, hails from Walpole, as do former Michigan quarterback Todd Collins and longtime Bruins defenseman Mike Milbury. The New England Patriots, who have won six Super Bowls during Schlittler’s lifetime, play their home games in the neighboring town of Foxboro.
Cam learned the national pastime from his father, John, a police chief in nearby Needham who played at Stonehill College and has coached youth baseball for the highly successful Northeast Gators Baseball Club. John taught his son more than just the fundamentals of the game; he instilled in him the values of hard work, being a good teammate, not taking any shortcuts. The son carries his family with him every time he steps between the lines, literally: The Roman numerals tattooed on his forearms are the dates (in 2016 and 2018) when his paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather passed away.
After a standout career at Walpole High, Schlittler headed to nearby Boston to play for head coach Mike Glavine at Northeastern. The Huskies leaned heavily on the right-hander as he worked to develop himself into someone who could be counted on in the biggest games. He first caught the eye of Damon Oppenheimer during the fall of 2020, when the Yankees’ vice president of domestic amateur scouting was spending extra time in the region watching his son play hockey. From then on, whether it was Northeast area scout Matt Hyde seeing him pitch in the Cape Cod Baseball League or Tennessee/Western North Carolina area scout Ricky Castle seeing him mow down North Carolina State, Schlittler impressed Yankees scouts at every turn.
“Cam always had the stuff,” said his best friend and college teammate, Sebastian Keane, who went 7-0 at High-A Hudson Valley this season after being drafted by the Yankees in the 18th round in 2022. “He always had the potential of being that frontline ace, and I’ve always seen it. He has so much confidence in himself, and he always knew he had the ability, so when he came in freshman year and was a reliever, he wasn’t happy with that, and he was always going to work his butt off to be in a position where he is now. And I could see, even in the Minor Leagues, him kind of starting off slow in the FCL and then Single-A and not doing the best, but he’s always bet on himself to be able to perform.”
Just as Glavine (the brother of Hall of Fame southpaw Tom) turned to Schlittler in the 2021 Colonial Athletic Association championship game on two days’ rest, his Minor League managers gladly handed him the ball with their season on the line. In 2023, his first pro season ended with a start in the South Atlantic League championship series -- a no-decision in the Renegades’ final game of the year. In 2024, it was Schlittler on the mound for the Patriots in the Eastern League Championship Series finale.
“He’s definitely a guy who wants the ball in big moments, and that characteristic is not the case for everybody, but it certainly is for Cam Schlittler,” said Hyde.
How the Yankees’ 2025 season ends remains to be seen. But if Schlittler is called upon, his entire team will feel good about the stoic young flamethrower on the mound.
“He’s super laid back; he’s very chill,” said Warren. “That’s his personality, which fits perfectly with when you watch him pitch. He just kind of mopes off the mound, even though he just struck out three. That’s just how he is. He’s doing what he loves to do: throw fastballs and get people out. I’m glad he’s on our team.”
“Mentally, his presence on the mound is not very rookie-like,” said Rodón, who has embraced the role of Schlittler’s mentor. “He’s quiet -- as he should be. He’s young. He needs to take in everything that’s going on, take in the information. But he fits in well. He’s got a good demeanor about him, just kind of a gentle tall guy. I can’t call him a giant because he’s skinny. Just a gentle demeanor, but he pitches different than that.”
The Yankees’ clubhouse is smitten by the new addition. Performances such as Schlittler’s Aug. 20 gem against the Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field, when he took a perfect game into the seventh inning, have given them reason to dream big about his future. As the calendar flips to October, Schlittler said he’ll be ready for any opportunity that might come his way.
“I’m someone that handles the pressure well,” he said. “I’m confident in myself that I’m the best guy out there when I’m playing, besides the other eight guys behind me.
“I take every start as though it’s a playoff game. Obviously, I haven’t experienced that environment yet, but I’m someone that’s going to embrace that, and as long as people are putting their faith in me, I’m going to make sure I go out there and prove them right.”
Nathan Maciborski is the executive editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the October 2025 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.